


Christmas Wrapping

by tinknevertalks



Series: Alternate [2]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 06:30:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13141014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinknevertalks/pseuds/tinknevertalks
Summary: It's been five months since Helen saw Nikola at James and John's wedding, and text messages and phone calls can only hold a woman for so long. So why does it feel like the universe is conspiring against them? And why is James' sending her shopping when she's thoroughly hungover?





	Christmas Wrapping

**Author's Note:**

> Very loosely based on Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses - one of my all time favourite Christmas songs - this has been plaguing me for the past few weeks.
> 
> Also, this is a prompt fill for a Tumblr ask meme. There was a list with a bunch of kisses and DownToTheSea asked for two (one being in this fic). The kiss: Throwing their arms around the other person, holding them close as they kiss.
> 
> This is unbeta'd at the moment (but will probs get cleaned up as and when I get the chance).
> 
> Nadolig llawen, and I hope you enjoy the fic!

“Blast!” James cursed, stood by the cooker as a hungover Helen propped up his table.

“Sssh James, they can hear you over at the palace,” she muttered into her tea. “What’s wrong?”

He sighed. “There’s a few bits I need for lunch today, John and I both forgot to get them. Could you pop down the shop, get some bread and milk?”

Helen’s head landed gently on the table, the groan masked by the wood. “But it's Christmas Eve.”

“You’re dressed,” he remarked, turning back to the cooker, “and you need some fresh air.”

“My first day off since July and you’re making me go outside?” She drank her tea as James laughed.

“You barely take your holidays Helen, so don’t complain.”

“And neither of us made you drink that vile concoction last night,” added John as he breezed in. “Good morning, darling,” he murmured, kissing the back of James’ head, his hand stroking his husband’s arm. “What was it you said? ‘Anything to forget--’”

“Ah!” Helen interrupted, holding up her hand, ignoring the twin smirks on her best friends’ faces. “Anything said last night can be forgotten.”

“And deny ourselves prime, incriminating evidence that Helen Magnus, the woman who denies the existence of feelings, has a crush on James’ colleague?” John asked, sitting at the table, pouring himself a glass of orange juice.

“Really, John? I don’t have a crush on him.” Her phone beeped, and without seeing who it was, she smiled.

“Oh no,” he agreed, “you always smile like a sap at your phone.”

She rolled her eyes, pursed her lips, and fiddled with her phone. Yes, it was a message from him, but just to prove John wrong, she wasn’t going to open it.

Yet.

“Milk and bread?” she asked, standing up, fingertips not leaving the tabletop.

James nodded, and mentioned a few other things. Helen smiled tightly (the paracetamol hadn’t kicked in yet), before diving into her handbag, sprawled lazily as it was on the countertop. “Aha!” Sunglasses on face (she’d looked out the window, first thing that morning, and recoiled at the sight of all that sunshine), wallet in hand, she left the kitchen to another beep, a reminder, from her phone.

Whatever magic had been in the air for James and John’s wedding hadn’t dissipated with the morning after wake up. Both slightly hungover, Helen had been greeted to Nikola’s slightly bemused, but overall generally happy, face, before being properly greeted.

Twice.

She’d left his room in the hotel sated, in last night’s outfit with his number on her phone (and hers on his). She had been toying with the idea of sneaking out (between rounds one and two), but something about him intrigued her, and he was deliciously handsome. So she’d stayed. And cursed herself for finding him so interesting. He worked in the same company as James, but not the same department, swam most days, had the most intense blue eyes she’d ever had the good fortune to drown in.

The fact that the sex was amazing was neither here nor there.

When his first text came through, somehow with the delicate balance of suggestive flirtation and genial bantering, Helen hadn’t wanted to text back straight away ( _play it cool_ ) but she couldn’t help the grin as her thumbs moved across the screen. So for a while (the last half of July and part of August) that’s how things were - flirty texts (some decidedly unflirty and just all out smut), a phone call here and there, but never could they get their schedules meshed.

The plan had been, for her late August birthday, she’d be in London, nominally staying with John and James. Nothing had been said to them, but she’d hoped Nikola would be in town (he’d hoped too, if the text he sent was anything to go by). Then James ruined everything, telling her the whole of Nikola’s department had come down with food poisoning.

Hello thirty five and a day, sorry you’re stuck like a loner in your friends house, nursing the mother of all hangovers.

They tried again for John’s annual Halloween party, she’d even sent him pictures of her costume (and what little she planned to wear beneath). Then her stupid car decided to pack in on the A30, miles from anywhere, and the recovery truck took absolutely hours to arrive. Well, by then Helen had decided that, even if the thought of his hands on her made her hot and bothered, she wasn’t going to get to the party.

They texted each other all that night. The next morning (she alone in her bed, him alone in his) he asked for her hangover cure. (“Sex and paracetamol, unless I can’t have sex. Then it's just the painkillers.” She laughed when he called, but it soon turned saucy and she blushed just thinking about it.)

Last night was going to be the last time they tried meeting up. They’d both had enough of electronic communication without physical touch to back it up. The works’ do: everyone resplendent in all their festive colours, the worst Christmas jumpers she’d ever seen and a huge lack of Nikola.

_Where are you?_

A picture came through.

_A &E. My idiot roommate tried experimenting with electrical current. _

_Bloody hell. Is he ok?_

Another picture, Nikola with his roommate.

_He’ll be fine. It’s the concussion they’re worried about. Nigel can’t remember things easily._

Helen blinked down at her phone. Concussion? No Nikola.

Shaking her head, back in the present and walking out the door, she checked her text message.

_We should still try for New Year’s Eve…_

She shrugged to herself, miserable (stupid hangover).

_Maybe._

_I’ve got to go be milkmaid._

_What?_

The reply had been almost instantaneous. Despite herself, she grinned like a loon.

_Going to the shop._

_I’ll think about New Year’s._

The idea was getting more and more appealing, but she would want a quiet night in after visiting her father that day and she knew it. (Gregory Magnus always suffered around New Year’s, memories of the car accident that had robbed him of his dear Pat, Helen’s mother, haunting him still.)

“Oh dear Lord,” she muttered, walking through the automatic doors. it was absolute chaos. Grabbing a basket and donning her fiercest, ‘Get out of my way,’ face, she battled her way towards to the milk aisle, crowds parting before her like the Red Sea.

It was down the sweets aisle she saw him, which confused her greatly because she wasn’t expecting to recognise anyone here. “Nikola?”

Her phone beeped as he looked up, his eyes widening as he realised it was Helen saying his name. “I just sent you a message,” he told her lamely as she drank in the sight of him. As spiky haired as she remembered, his eyes the same brilliant blue. Pushing her sunglasses up off her face, she thanked everything in the universe for the foresight to wear makeup today as she watched him. Licking his lips, he found his tongue. “Hi.”

She grinned. “Hi.”

Neither could say who started, but the laughter poured from both of them as he stepped up to her, her arms opening automatically to hold him close. His nose in her hair, she could feel her heart thumping happily as his arms wrapped around her. “You bloody prat, why didn’t you say you lived around here?”

“Because I don’t,” he replied, smiling, “but it's the only place that sells these -- mmf!”

Helen couldn’t stop herself, kissing him for the first time since July, her senses thrilling as he tightened his arms around her, keeping her as close to his body as feasibly possible. “You were saying?” she gave as apology when she finally broke their kiss.

“I was?” His voice was delightfully dazed and Helen couldn’t help the grin. Stepping back and picking up her basket (when had that fallen to the floor?), she held it before her with both hands, as Nikola tapped his legs. “Where’s my phone?”

Helen plucked it from his hand. “There you go.”

“Good,” he said, unlocking it. “I have to call someone,” he explained, “just to-- Yes, James?”

“What are you--?” she asked, laughing. The whole day had gone a bit surreal.

“Is Lurch going to be pissed if I invite Helen to lunch? Uh huh… Uh huh…” He grinned, handing the phone to Helen, “I have no idea how he knows you’re here,” his demeanour a picture of innocence.

“I don’t care what you do so long as you bring the shopping back first and never tell me any of the details,” James told her before she could even breathe.

“Excuse me, what’s to say I’d say yes to lunch?” she asked, her hackles up.

“Because you’ve been mooning over him for months after one shag,” he told her matter of factly.

She stared at the bags of Maltesers before smiling deviously. “No worse than you.”

“Enjoy lunch, Helen,” he replied jovially, “and remind him that Lurch is the least imaginable name possible for John,” he added before hanging up. Glaring at the handset, she sighed and smiled when she realised this was it.

Finally seeing Nikola. “So…” she started, handing him back his phone. “Got a good cure for a hangover?”

His cheeks flushed just a bit before he wrapped an arm around her waist. “Yes,” he said, then before she could ask what they were kissing again, ignoring the negative mumbles and grumbles from others around them.

Thank god James had forgotten the cranberries.


End file.
